The Arthur of the Comics Project, sponsored by the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, is an ongoing effort to compile a comprehensive listing of the representations of the Matter of Britain in the comics medium. The corpus is international in scope and extends as far back as (at least) the 1920s. We welcome your help in achieving our goal, and we also appreciate news on other medieval-themed comics.

"Rejoice, my son, for thou hast chosen the Amulet of Right o'er the Sword of Might! Therefore, let there be beauty and strength--power and compassion--honour and humility, mirth and reverence--within you... Be one with thy brothers of the Round Table--with Arthur and Lancelot, Gawain and Galahad, with them all... Be thou what they were--a hero! Strive forever to maintain the rule of right--of law and justice--against those who live and rule by might."

Monday, April 16, 2012

Knights of the Living Dead Update

In my further quest for information on the recent series Knights of the Living Dead, I came across the following solicitation proving that the digital comics are merely a sampler of part of a larger story (perhaps to be told in multiple volumes):

KNIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD GN VOLUME 1

The mournful king, Arthur, has sentenced Queen Guinievere to burn for her infidelity, but he none-too-secretly expects her lover, Sir Lancelot, to save her. And here comes rescuer - Lancelot! - the greatest knight, on the greatest stallion. With a horde of the shambling dead behind him. As the greatest knight of all fights through the courtyard to reach the queen, Guinivere, before she burns at the stake, she sees he is not the hero she expected. Lancelot is among the stricken of the 'walking starvation.' Knights of Living Dead transcends the brain-munching of most zombie fiction and examines the nature of the soul and the essence of being.

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The Medieval Comics Project

The Medieval Comics Project is an outreach effort of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain and the nascent Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic and seeks to encourage interest in and intellectual discussion of representations of the medieval in comics and related media. The Medieval Comics Project hosts two listservs devoted to discussion of comics with medieval themes (the Arthurian Comics Discussion List and the now defunct Medieval Comics Discussion List) and the sibling blogs The Arthur of the Comics Project and The Medieval Comics Project. We have also sponsored a number of sessions at meetings of the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association and the International Congress on Medieval Studies and a session at 2018 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Popular / American Culture Association.

Our founder, Michael A. Torregrossa, MA, is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and co-founder of The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages. Torregrossa has been actively engaged in research on Arthurian-themed comics since the mid 1990s. He has presented on the topic at local, regional, national, and international conferences, and his published work includes the following: “Camelot 3000 and Beyond: An Annotated Listing of Arthurian Comic Books Published in the United States c. 1980-1998,” in Modern and Post-Modern Arthurian Literature, dd. John Matthews, spec. issue of Arthuriana: The Journal of Arthurian Studies 9.1 (Spring 1999); “Camelot 3000 and Beyond: An Annotated Listing of Arthurian Comic Books Published in the United States c. 1980-1998. Revised ed. (May 2000),” part of The Arthuriana / Camelot Project Bibliographies, maintained by Alan Lupack, University of Rochester, May 2000; “Once and Future Kings: The Return of King Arthur in the Comics,” in Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children: Essays on Arthurian Juvenilia, ed. Barbara Tepa Lupack, Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures, series ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and entries on "Comics" for both “Arthurian Literature, Art, and Film, 1995-1999,” eds. Norris J. Lacy and Raymond H. Thompson, in Arthurian Literature 18 (2001) and "The Arthurian Legend in Literature, Popular Culture, and the Performing Arts, 1999-2004,” eds. Raymond H. Thompson and Norris J. Lacy, in Arthurian Literature 22 (2005).

The Sword (1942-45), America's wartime defender of the homefront

Welcome

The Arthur of the Comics Project is sponsored by the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain in conjunction with the Arthurian Comics Discussion List, which was founded by Michael A. Torregrossa in July 2000 to promote intellectual discussion and debate on and to further interest in representations of the Matter of Britain in the comics medium. As a means to continue and disseminate this work, The Arthur of the Comics Project, sibling site to The Medieval Comics Project, was conceived by Torregrossa as an online database cataloging all representations of the Arthurian legend in the comics. The Arthur of the Comics Project is expected to launch in 2012 in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, the 70th anniversary of Ace Periodicals "The Sword," the 40th anniversary of Jack Kirby's The Demon, and the 30th anniversary of Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland's Camelot 3000, all seminal texts of the corpus.

The comics medium remains one of the least researched media of post-medieval Arthuriana in popular culture, despite the fact that Arthurian-themed comics have been in existence since (at least) the 1920s. International in scope, the corpus, which includes thousands of examples, encompasses all forms of the comics medium, including panel cartoons (as depicted in The Far Side and Hagar the Horrible), comic books (such as The Black Knight, Caliber, Camelot 3000, Excalibur and New Excalibur, Knewts of the Round Table, Lady Pendragon, Legends of Camelot or Muppet King Arthur), comic strips (notably Prince Valiant and Oaky Doaks), graphic albums and novels (for example, Batman: The Chalice, Knights of the Lunch Table and Uther the Half-Dead King), manga (like Avalon High: Coronation), web comics (such as Arthur, King of Time and Space and The Path), and adaptations into other media, such as film, television programming, electronic games, and collectibles.